Slashdot Mirror
Bounties vs. Extreme Internet Harassment
squiggleslash writes Brianna Wu, a game studio owner in Boston, found herself the target of numerous anonymous death threats last month, apparently the escalation of a campaign that started when she spoke up for women in gaming, and that intensified during the GamerGate train wreck. Rather than hide, she's offering an $11,000+ cash reward for anyone who helps put her attacker in jail, and she's reporting — albeit at a time many see GamerGate being in its death throes — that it's already having an effect. Wu is also setting up a legal fund to go after those promoting more extreme libels against her and others, with screenshots of a forged tweet purporting to be written by her still circulating around the Internet.
The NYPD has a similar program of bounties that is reasonably well known. Given that various Crime Stoppers programs have been going on since 1975, I expect they're reasonably effective.
It's not even about that one guy. This is a (repeated) tactic to slander other people who legitimately disagree with her, and distract from the Gamergate scandal.
If Nathan Grayson, Patricia Hernandez, et al were Republicans, Gamergate would be handled exactly like the journalism scandal that it is. The corrupt writers would lose their jobs, their employers would acknowledge the seriousness of the situation and at least attempt to convince us that that it wouldn't happen again, and the rest of their ilk would be watched like a hawk for evidence of similar transgressions for a long, long time.
But no. Because the perpetrators were extreme leftists, they're afraid that the scandal might give folks like Fox News and Limbaugh political ammo*, so there was a complete media blackout, the likes of which I've never seen before (not a SINGLE article detailing the corruption, on ANY tech/gaming site, for a week). Another part of the blackout was blanket censorship in user forums/comments, up to and including reddit and--no bullshit--4chan. IMO this censorship of users merely discussing the scandal is still the most oppressive (and damning) anti-GG measure of all.
And then when the blackout didn't work, they colluded in a synchronized shotgun blast of articles to slander their core audience and intimidate any dissenters among them. The long-running smear campaign that began with the "Gamers are Dead" articles continues to this day, and the popularity of Gamergate is the long-running response to it. Every criticism and call for integrity is met with completely irrelevant accusations of misogyny and right-wing motivations. Gamers are (rightly) astonished and appalled to see corruption defended so vigorously (and uniformly).
And now that the smear campaign isn't working either, anonymous threats are used as an excuse to again slander the movement (this time as terrorists) and completely ignore the corruption. So of course as the smear campaign ramped up, the popularity of Gamergate ramped up accordingly--it's averaged over 50K tweets per day for a while now. And the gaming press, having addressed almost none of its ethics issues (to say nothing of its contempt for the gaming community), regularly feigns disbelief that Gamergate hasn't "burned out" yet in one-sided opinion pieces that, if anything, more than prove the need for the movement.
The crazy thing is that Gamergate itself is largely leftist. I am right-wing on many issues, but I've been impressed by (and learned something from) the integrity of the vast majority of left-leaning individuals in Gamergate. They just want journalism they can trust. They want the bad eggs removed, even if the bad eggs share many of their political stances. They understand that circling the wagons to protect "the cause" and "do good work" is likely to result in far more harm to the cause in the long run.
The mainstream media has now taken notice, and is just as happy as the tech press to pretend the journalistic lapses and cover up never happened, and to slander Gamergate as right-wing misogynist terrorists, all to support the invented narrative. It's an all too familiar story to those of us who've seen the mainstream media portray DVD ripping as grand theft auto, net neutrality as communism, or Jack Thompson as a defender of morality. But in this case, unbelievably, even here on Slashdot there hasn't been a Gamergate article yet that doesn't go out of its way to frame the whole issue in terms of misogyny and harrassment (much less an article that's pro- or even neutral). Is Slashdot politically motivated to misrepresent this issue? The question is moot, because most of those articles got 500-1200 replies each, so the Gawker-style clickbaiting is motivation enough. As far as we know, Slashdot's editors are kicking themselves for not praising Jack Thompson years ago as a hero activist.
* not an invalid fear, but you have to cross that bridge when you come to it. If you try to pre-emptively murder the truth then you
> Gotcha... death threats are just pranks.
Gotcha... You would rather live in a Soviet or Iranian style police state where even the smallest bit of mindless nonsense is treated like a threat against the state.
The path you are advocating is fully of unintended consequences that you won't be immune from despite your obvious arrogance.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
FBI and DHS are investigating and have CONFIRMED that two of the women claiming to have RECEIVED death threats... SENT THEM TO THEMSELVES.
http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/859/945/263.jpg
Past example: http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/womens-rights-activist-charged-with-rape-threat-hoax-on-face
Those are the types of pranks 4chan does. They don't actually kill people.
Except for the guy who posted on 4chan a couple days ago about killing his girlfriend. The girlfriend's kid came home from school and found her body.
#DeleteChrome
We don't. Because the people in question are likely 12 and 13yrs old and couldn't get convicted anyway
You are forgetting that in the USA, it is not uncommon to sentence kids to jail for life.
http://www.hrw.org/news/2005/1...
There are at least 2,225 child offenders serving life without parole sentences in U.S prisons for crimes committed before they were age 18, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said in a new joint report published today.
While many of the child offenders are now adults, 16 percent were between 13 and 15 years old at the time they committed their crimes. An estimated 59 percent were sentenced to life without parole for their first-ever criminal conviction. Forty-two states currently have laws allowing children to receive life without parole sentences.
also read, http://www.thedailybeast.com/a...
Does an 11-Year-Old Deserve Life in Prison?
Eleven-year-old Jordan Brown is accused of killing his father's pregnant fiancé with a hunting rifle. Does that means he belongs in an adult prison with rapists, murderers, and hardened criminals?
So 13 year old making death threats? Hey, they could spend many many years behind bars for that and anything related.
Uttering threats is ILLEGAL in Canada. It's not just a matter of carrying through, the very act is illegal precisely because it's impossible to tell a fake one from a real one, but it would be negligent to not act on a threat.
It wouldn't surprise me if one day it was made illegal in the USA because of this whole debacle. It's NOT worth chasing down frivolous threats, so it's better to make sure those don't get made.
I don't see why asshole kids should be protected while the victims of the threats have to take them seriously and move out of their homes--in terms of assessing risk, it's nuts to ignore potential threats to your person. You just never know when one of the hundreds of people is actually serious and walks to your place with a gun.
Well, ignoring death threats didn't work.
And the only one changing realities is gamergate themselves.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
By posting pictures of her house, and threatening specific acts of violence, some of these jerks may have crossed the credibility line.
Quick - lock up anyone who can use Google Street View.
The more this goes on, the less credibility the complainants have. It's understandable that a young soccer mom whose only knowledge of the Internet is facebook and twitter might get upset over anonymous threats via twitter, but not a 50-something who works in the industry. If Wu was that upset about anonymous threats by internet trolls who "OMG HAD A PICTURE OF THEIR HOME HAZ 2 MOVE", the $11,000 would probably better be spent on talking with a therapist. At a certain point, it's just not healthy to keep dwelling on what turned out to be threats totally lacking in credibility.
The passage of a bit of time should have allowed Wu to gain a more balanced perspective on things, rather than taking action that will just feed the trolls. "Oh look, we're offering rewards, with different amounts for every level achieved." Note to Wu - life is not a game. Stop treating it as such if you ever want to be taken seriously again.
The more I hear and see of this mess, and the deeper I dig, the less sympathy I have for ANY of the parties involved.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Wouldn't it be funny if the pro-GG side found the person sending the threats and collected on the $11k? A few months ago when GG was still housed on /v/ the reaction to people posting hateful/abrasive stuff on twatter was always called out and the poster berated for being an idiot. The pro-GG side doesn't stand for harassment on either side; the ones harassing people are on the extremes or are trolls looking to make trouble.
Food for thought: The major camps in GG can be summed up like this:
1. Trolls who make the death threats or are trying to inflame the issue (both sides).
2. People genuinely concerned with ethics in games Journalism (TotalBiscuit).
3. "Games Journalism" Media/central anti figures (Quinn, Wu, etc, anti), attempting to either silence group 2's dissent or gain fame by playing up their victimization. The "'"I'm being forced out of my home by death threats' on her way to the airport to fly to a conference filled with thousands of people she doesn't know" type and the "gamers are dead" type.
4. Those reacting to group 3's name-calling/bully-tactics (Boogie). The "average Joe/Jane" gamer who doesn't like being called a misogynist or a hateful person for just playing games.
5. Those supporting group 3 because of the harassment from group 1 (pro), who seem to be seeing a social issue (innocent woman being attacked by evil men) and want to fight against that. Views group 2/4 as slut-shaming victim-blaming patriarchy and has no intention of changing that view.
I also found it rather ironic when Sarkeesian went on Colbert and talked about how too many women portrayed in video games were damsels in distress and asked why more women couldn't solve their own problems.
I find it interesting and disturbing how some people would rather believe elaborate conspiracy theories then believe a woman.
The same accusations were made against Anita Sarkeesian. For some reason she posted death and rape threats against herself on Twitter, in order to lose money by being unable to attend public speaking events. Brianna Wu is wasting money on lawyers and obviously wants to lose $11,000 to put some random person behind bars... to massage her own ego or something.
Or maybe it's a $11,000 dare, where the person daring to threaten her wins an all expenses paid holiday in jail.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The threats were not serious. Going "OMG they have my ADDRESS!!! I have to move out!!!" She reported it to the police (the right thing to do) but temporarily moving was HER decision, not a police recommendation.
Proving you have researched your target and showing you have the means to locate and attack them is pretty much the definition of a serious threat. Any court of law would look at the pre-meditated nature of the threats and the fact that the perpetrator had the means to carry them out and send them to jail.
What they did is a crime and temporarily moving out is a sensible and proportionate response.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
No, it is credible when it includes your home address. That's actually the law - credible threats are ones where the person making the threat demonstrates that they have the means to carry it out.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC